Just some lighthearted fluff. Because writing torture is exhausting. Lighthearted fluff town! The ending didn't want to come out right and kept being either cheesier than a four-cheese grilled cheese sandwich minus the bread or so dry and stiff it was painful... I hope I at least made it tolerable :) Enjoy!

Several long, quiet hours after they had all been reunited, he made himself speak.

It was a reluctant admission, made through a painfully tight chest and a lump in his throat, but the words needed to be said. So he forced them out, no matter the finality that then echoed in his mind or the difficulty in tasting his own defeat.

"Second Lieutenant. Warrant Officer. Master Sergeant." A pause; wounded hands twisting in his lap. "...You're all dismissed."

The silence weighed a little heavier, and at length was broken by the sound of someone's shoe scuffing against the floor.

"...Sir?"

He wasn't sure which one had questioned him. It sounded like Falman. Maybe Breda.

Roy cleared his throat again with a sigh.

"While I am deeply appreciative of all the sacrifices you have all made for me, and can never thank any of you enough for what you've done, it is no longer fair to ask for you to be tethered to me. I... I am not going to be Fuhrer, so..."

Another attempt at clearing his throat. The lump didn't go away, and it hurt.

"So, please, sirs. ...Leave me behind."

I am useless to you.

There was another long silence.

And, then:

"No, sir."

"No, sir."

"No, sir."

Hawkeye was the only one who didn't say anything, still ensconced in a medicated sleep, but he heard her no, sir echo on the heels of his staff's refusal all the same.

Roy sighed, leaning his head back, and shut his useless eyes.

Havoc called.

It was short and not sweet.

"You told me you were still headed to the top, and that you expected me to catch up, sir. Well, I'm still planning to meet you as Fuhrer Mustang, sir. And if I can get there without legs, YOU can get there without eyes, so don't you dare let me get up to the top only to find you're not there."

Then he'd hung up.

And Roy, the ache in his chest so deep, the shame at his own failure so complete, had just sat there for several moments in shock, then handed the phone back to the nurse and turned onto his other side, squeezing stinging eyes shut and trying not to feel quite so ashamed.

The next morning, it was Breda who came by first.

Not that Roy was aware of that, because all he heard was the creak of the door whining open, the scrape of a chair being pushed back, and then, lots of rustling of papers and muted thumps that sounded like books hitting the floor. He turned his back on the noise, curling on his other side and feeling the sunlight warm his face, figuring it was a doctor here to examine Hawkeye.

He didn't realize otherwise until the second lieutenant just started talking.

"The climate in the Ishvalan region is not suitable for most crops in Amestris to be grown in a cost effective manner. However, the unique soil found in the mountain ranges does allow for some agriculture, enough so that Ishval could become self-sustainable. The attributes of the soil that allow this are..."

Roy blinked slowly, the words obtrusive and confusing in the darkness. He opened his mouth, licking dry lips, then swallowed uncertain words and remained silent. He wasn't sure what he wanted to say, or that this strange occurrence wasn't just some odd sort of a dream, so he just lay there and let it happen, feeling all together too passive at the moment to do anything other than accept it.

When, many minutes later, the man had yet to cease, his curiosity finally got the best of him.

"...and the seasonal rainfalls do allow for-"

"What are you doing, Second Lieutenant?"

Finally, a break in the lecture.

It was quiet for several moments, so quiet Roy thought he could hear the other man breathing.

"This is the first of five texts covering agriculture in Ishval, sir. Information you'll need to know, when you start on restoration projects. I've got the other four with me as well, so I expect we'll be able to move on to the region's economy before next week."

Restoration projects? He wanted to laugh aloud, not that it was really all that funny. He caught a mental image of himself stumbling down the ruins of an Ishvalan street, tripping over his own feet and staring blindly at a sun so bright it burned his useless eyes. Restoration? Redemption? His own forgiveness, absolution? Impossible.

Hadn't he told his men as such? Hadn't he told them all to leave him? That it'd been an honor to serve with them but that the service was done now, and they needed to leave him behind in the dark so they, at least, could still live their lives?

Hadn't he told them to leave him behind?

There was the rustle of a page turning, the sound of Breda shifting in his seat, and what almost sounded like a quiet chuckle. "You'd better listen up, sir. I'm going to test you on this at the end of the hour."

And he kept reading.

Roy listened.

Falman was his quietest visitor.

He made appearances in the afternoons, when Breda broke off reading to him to both give his ears a rest and hunt down food. Falman brought no books, no quizzes; Falman would simply sit next to him, coming in with a bundle of his paperwork. He'd slide a pen into his hand and read the forms to him, each one painstaking and slow, then guide his fingers towards where to sign. And then it would be on to the next form.

While he was sure the generals had already decided he was to be discharged, forced to retire, it hadn't happened yet; in the chaos of the government's upheaval concerns did not lie with an old soldier like him, and so he still had his rank, and his signature still carried all its necessary weight. Even if paperwork was truly all he was capable of, even if his signature would only mean something for surely a few more weeks at most, he could still do it. Even if it took an hour to go through perhaps ten forms, ten forms that would've taken him ten minutes before, he could do it.

In one particularly dark moment, when Roy hadn't even wanted to sit up and put his hands to meager use, stewing in darkness and inability, Falman had glared at him so hard Roy could feel it even through blindness.

"Sir, with all due respect: I did not stand up to King Bradley for you only to have you give up to something like this."

He'd heard the rumors. Heard the murmurs of lowly Warrant Officer Vato Falman standing before occupied HQ, facing down the Fuhrer himself, and refusing to stand aside even upon pain of death. He'd not yet addressed them, either the way pride swelled in his chest at the very thought or the wish to snap at him. To yell what the hell had gotten into him, did he really think he'd be reprimanded for saving his own life at the expense of the mere second his death would've taken Wrath, what the fuck he'd thought he'd accomplish by dying...?

In the end, he said none of those things.

In the end, he heard the slightest tremor in his man's voice, felt his hands shake when the pen was forced back into his fingers again, and just remembered how relieved he'd been, at the end of things, to know they were all alive.

"Don't jest, Falman," he said, and, bewilderingly, he actually felt himself smile. "After surviving Olivier Armstrong, don't pretend Bradley was really enough to frighten you."

It was the first time he'd smiled in days.

"...Quite right, sir," Falman said at last, and he heard the quiet surprise and small grin on his voice alone, and somehow, that iron weight in his chest lightened just a little bit more.

The set up of a communications network on the floor of his hospital room baffled him. From the logistics of it to just how on earth Fuery had convinced the doctors to allow it, it just baffled him.

And just don't even ask him how Fuery had managed to track down seven radio stations, three headsets, or a generator.

Don't even ask.

But the radios meant he was no longer tethered to usefulness only through paperwork, and suddenly he was in contact with men all over the country, helping to coordinate recovery efforts and taking charge in the sudden power vacuum created by the lack of generals. He was giving orders again (and unlike the ones given to his team, these were actually followed), and it filled with a sense of purpose like no other.

For a moment, he was no longer Roy, blind man, hospital patient. For a moment, he was Colonel Mustang again.

In that moment, he realized Colonel Mustang wasn't dead yet.

One morning, when Breda was reading to him, Falman was shuffling around, and Fuery was fixing equipment, Roy reached for a glass of water and ended up knocking it to the floor.

He snapped.

He didn't remember what he'd said. He just remembered it had been loud and cruel. He yelled at his men, shouting orders and screaming at them to get out. He cried leave me be! and gasped that he was ruined, unable, incapable, useless. He shouted orders for them to abandon him, that he couldn't do this anymore and they needed to stop trying, he grabbed for the spilled glass and hurled it against the wall, and he screamed to be left behind and forgotten.

He shouted until his voice was hoarse, and his strength left him, and he was shaking in exhaustion and doubled over in stunned grief.

After several minutes, Breda cleared his throat, turned another page, and kept on reading.

Hawkeye was silent, ordered by doctors to rest her voice for a full week. It was difficult, even agonizing, sometimes, to not be able to even hear her as he could others; many times he had to force himself to stop gasping and make himself believe she was still alive no matter the lack of proof.

But she was there.

She was always there.

And he knew, in the silent way her hand would find his at night, that she was proud.

Ed made blind jokes.

Constantly.

The kid did spend most of his time with his brother, as Al was still bedridden, and Roy found himself both too busy in his team's workload and just incapable of finding his room by himself to visit. But the former alchemist strolled in once or twice a day, and with him came an arsenal of blind jokes.

The first time Ed had laughed oh, quit your whining. Truth was trying to do you a favor, dipshit; save you the horror of seeing your ugly face in the mirror ever again, his subordinates had all fallen into a stunned silence, and Roy, for his part, had been too shocked to know what to feel or think.

The tenth time, he finally rounded back on him with an insult of his own.

"You know, Fullmetal, I'm not sure if I'm actually blind or you're just so small I can't even see you!"

A few seconds of surprised silence later- and possibly was no one was more surprised than Roy himself- and Ed was shouting at him again.

"Fuck you, bastard! Probably a good thing you can't see the finger I'm holding up right in your face or you'd just whine and whine like you always do! Loser."

"Oh, so mature, Fullmetal. So. Mature. You're as mature as you look! Five year old mini brat."

"Like you fucking know! You have no idea how tall I am. You know what? You know what?! In my last transmutation Truth made me taller! Much taller! You're the midget now; I'm seven feet tall!"

"Liar!"

"You can't prove it, old man! Blind idiot! Bastard!"

"Midget! Brat! Kid!"

A nurse finally entered into the shouting match, forcing Ed to leave- apparently the entire floor could hear them. But on his way out the door Ed had still hurled back a sharp jab about being so ugly he'd made himself go blind just by looking at his own reflection, and the sound of the door slamming shut had reverberated throughout the room before Roy could get in his own finishing blow.

Forget the Promised Day. Roy hadn't laughed this hard in months.

When everything was said and done, and the blindness was lifted almost as quickly as it had come by a miraculous visit from an even more miraculous doctor, he felt more than a little silly, and definitely ashamed, thinking back to his embarrassing behavior. That was no way for a future Fuhrer to act. Brought so low down so quickly by such a temporary set back? It was just sad.

But it had happened, and he was more than a little touched, by what his staff had done for him in the wake of depression and defeat. Because even though they'd never once copped to their motivations, it was plain as day when they'd become such nags and slavedrivers over the course of just a few days. And he knew, that if it hadn't been for them, he would have given up.

He tried to thank them for it.

They didn't let him.

"Excuse me, sir, but we really didn't do anything not in the job description."

Roy glanced in surprise towards the newly returned Havoc, who was smirking a little.

"Just as he said." Breda waved a pen at him, rolling his eyes as if it should be obvious.

Falman was next, the warrant officer unreadable but his voice warm all the same. "Yes. We just kept you doing your job, sir."

"Of course," Fuery added from his desk, raising a hand. "We're used to you trying to slack off on paperwork, anyway. And there's no need to apologize for it... we've all done it!"

Hawkeye gave him a slight smile, her eyes bright. "And now you know, sir: ordering us to leave won't allow you a break on your paperwork. Though, there's really no thanks necessary. After all, as Breda said. We were just doing our jobs."

And with that, she returned back to her work, and the rest of his staff followed her lead, leaving Roy to stare at them all in bewildered disbelief. His heart swelled a little, and he wondered how it was possible to feel so good even when he knew he didn't deserve them.

Just doing their jobs, his ass.

He had the best team in the whole damn military.